A sheet of metal in my back yard, maybe four feet by four feet, in the early 80’s with my first detector. It was a big signal and it wasn’t more than a five or six inches inches down. I thought for sure I’d found a chest or something fabulous and ended up with rusty metal and a huge piece of the lawn to replace.
As a kid, with my first detector in the mid 1970s, with a Whites 66TR : In a field I got one of those old state of California highway signs for Hwy. 101. Heavy glazed baked plastic enamel on steel sign. It must have been several feeet across. And was in a shape (clover-leaf?) that had long since given way, in the early 1960s (?) to a new motto/shape .
I propped the thing next to a tree , thinking "this will be a cool whatzit for my backyard" . Intended to pick it up on my way out. But then forgot to pick it up.
Fast forward to the 1990s, and I was eating in a restaurant where the proprietor had decorated the interior with all sorts of old signs. He was a collector of old auto signs (gas, road signs, cola, etc...). I described the sign that I had found 20+ yrs. earlier as a kid. He said that they would fetch $700 or more if in decent shape. Apparently a collectible. And by now (another 20 yrs. later) it is no doubt worth even more. I kick myself for not remembering to hike it out.
Lots of plow points, full ones at that. In england I've dug down a couple of feet for a point, thinking it might of been something else.
Kind of sucks when the site is 500+ft from the edge of the field. My promise to the permissions if I dig it, I'll remove it so it's a few trips back to the truck on some sites. Lots of sheet metal and large brass/copper trim off things. In the fields it's never really an issue digging large items, but in the bush it can be a pain.
A lump of lead that was about 3' x 3' x 3' in the woods on the WWI Camp Hancock site near Augusta, GA. I didn't attempt recovery, but speculated as to scrap value with the guys I was digging with at the time. Nobody had any idea on how to get the lump out of the woods. Found an iron cannon barrel in the dredgings from Lake Clara Mear at Piedmont Park in downtown Atlanta around 1990?, had no idea how to retrieve it since metal detecting was outlawed in the park at the time, and probably still is. Also found a propane stove on the beach just North of the San Roman 1715 shipwreck site, I didn't uncover the whole unit once I realized what it was, but it did alert me to the fact that I was detecting in a deep sand area, and basically wasting my time detecting in that area.
A Volkswagen from the early 60's. It had been dumped off in a canyon I guess. then later washed on down towards the river and over the years covered up. We dug enough around it to determine it was the whole car, but we left it there.
I dug up the oven door to an old Franklin stove.As I unearthed it and started seeing letters and a handle my mind said safe ,I was a little disappointed as it was a very hard recovery.